La vie est un chantier

Set in the newly reunified Berlin of the 90's, "Life is All You Get" (english title)is one of those really excellent movies that tell a story of not only some interesting people, but of the time & place in which they live. Jan is struggling to get by, working in a slaughterhouse, staying with his sister, her smart & funny little girl, and her lout of a husband. A series of major upsets impacts his life: His ex-girlfriend tells him she's got AIDS, his father dies face down in a plate of ravioli, and, while accidentally caught up in a street riot, Jan knocks down a couple of guys chasing a woman (named Vera) - not knowing that they're plain-clothes cops trying to arrest her. He loses his job at this time, too, and faces a nearly impossible task of paying the heavy fine for assaulting the cops. On the bright side, he and Vera begin a relationship - haltingly, and (for him) clumsily - as they negotiate life in a city experiencing the very awkward transition between two political worlds. The characters & situations beautifully straddle the line between the wholly believable and the hysterically quirky. It's really a shame that this film didn't get an official U.S. release - it's well worth your time.

This is my favourite German film - if you get a chance to watch 'Goodbye Lenin' and 'Berlin Nachtgestalten' as well, you have pretty much a 360 degree panorama of life in Berlin after the Wende. Superb acting, and very funny, too. The beautiful thing about this film is that the humour, being largely visual, makes it very accessible to viewers whose German isn't so fluent.

Storming performance by Ricky Tomlinson

If you only see one German film, see this one, not some pretentious tosh like 'Lola Rennt' or the uniquitous Verlorene Ehre von Katharina Blum

As the title suggests: 'Life is a construction site', this whole movie seems to be a construction site - one that won't be finished. The movie spectator has to watch dull characters wander through a boring script, but very rarely he is likely to sense a spark of sympathy or an emotional reaction. The character of the greek girl alone is played with carefulness and emotion but apart from that, most of the movie is a waste of time.

If you like to watch movies about the topic of people desperately looking for love in a cold world I'd strongly suggest Pedro Almodovars 'All about my mother' or 'Magnolia' instead! I'd also suggest an alternative German movie: Watch 'Train Birds' a.k.a. 'Zugvögel... einmal nach Inari' by Peter Lichtefeld - a brilliant masterpiece.

As I'm a fan of contemporary German cinema (Becker, Tykwer, Wenders), I was thrilled to find a copy of this unknown work. The first 10 minutes sets up a fantastic premise (not your usual boy-meets-girl in a coffee shop), and the next 30 minutes draws us into the odd lives of 4 mysterious, unemployed dreamers who meet each other in equally strange ways. Sounds great, right? Add to this the creative style of Wolfgang Becker and Tom Tykwer, and how can it go wrong?

Well, I'm not sure how it went wrong, but it definitely did.

In a classic example of "good idea, no substance", this film begins to deflate around the halfway mark with no backbone to hold it up. The interesting lives we had been led to anticipate turn out to be rather commonplace. Dialogue is so sparse it's negligible. And the plot falls back to a series of boring clichés--the kinds which you can overhear in any bar at closing time if you're patient enough to listen. It reminds me very much of Wim Wenders' early unscripted work (Paris Texas) which begins famously but thins out into oblivion. Or maybe it's like a Lenny Kravitz song that starts with a cool guitar riff but goes nowhere but boredom.

I would recommend this film to fans of "mood" rather than "substance". If you are a fan of Godard, Bela Tarr, or movies where Ethan Hawke plays the lead (Reality Bites, Before Sunset), then you may enjoy this. However if you're a fan of Kieslowsky, Kubrick, Herzog or typically the filmmakers who pack a hidden message, I would suggest you pass on this one.

I stumbled upon this film late last night on Dutch tv. Smitten I was! A story filled with sub-plots, symbolism and engagement. A love story in Berlin after "die Wende" dealing with kapitalism and aids and more things that hit the "Ossies" by surprise. Filled with lots of lovely and funny characters, all displayed by great acting performances. A MUST SEE!